Identity Management: A Critical Dimension of Global Management

Identitätsmanagement: Ein Erfolgsfaktor des globalen Managements

Document from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, , course: Interkulturelles Management, language: English, abstract: This is the most important question man is faced with, because his self-perception guides his values and behaviours. The solution of the question will impact himself and as a consequence the environment. Therefore it is the most important individual and social question, whether it is avoided or solved in one cultural way or the other. Therefore it is also not surprising that all civilisations and cultures on the on hand tend to agree on the prime importance of the question and as a consequence try to find culturally conditioned solutions to the question on the other hand. According to the prevailing paradigm, philosophical, spiritual and, nowadays, supposedly more scientific ones, based on natural science and the humanities alike, are offered. Social science offers cultural values models and the dynamics of group affiliation throughout socialization to answer the question on the assumption that man's self-perception is a cultural construct. Here man's identity is a matter of sociocultural conditioning in addition to unique individual and universal endowments which, nonetheless, are additional conditioners. So, the term conditioning prevails. Science concludes to science-specific determinisms which are also conditioned perception, and philosophical and spiritual answers as to man's identity bear the conditioning hue of the ideology that acts as a filter of perception. Is there only relativity in the identity construction of man or is there anything that transcends ism-relative identity construction that explains man's real identity and that can therefore appease man himself and his relations with other identity assumptions that tend to clash in the social arena, as they entail identity-specific values and behavioural patterns? This is a seemingly impossible question because man's mind that tries to answer the question seems to be a time-relative construct itself which can therefore, similarly, offer only relative answers that are not time enduring, because that mind changes with its conditioning in time and therefore tends to provide relative answers. So, how can the quest for human identity be managed in a satisfactory way, a way that is not conducive to identity clashes based on identity mismanagement